Talk:Illica Falki Raiders/@comment-68.186.83.193-20140725092222/@comment-188.26.155.9-20160104232728
I've beaten multiple parties of Illica Falki to date, and greater opponents, too. The Illica Falki in 0.75 (the current version I am playing - too lazy to update and lose savegames) are tough, but not nearly as tough as you make them to be. There are several ways to beat them - as well as other armies. Here are my top two favorites. ONE - Operation Traffic Jam AKA Shmuck Bait. Mass archers, plus a fairly well-equipped player character on an armored horse with decent speed. ATTENTION: Traffic Jam works best by using extreme caution or the CTRL + H healing cheat. CTRL + ALT + H to heal your mount. Figure out the approximate max range of your archers before the fight with the Falki. Use them in battle several times, and watch the map closely, noting at about what distance to the target do they start firing. Preferred battle terrain is an area with high ground for the archers to hold position on. If the Falki have to go over a hill in front of you, then through a valley, then ascend your hill to get to you, you're golden. If not, a simple hill with a fairly steep incline will do just fine. Make a note of the enemy numbers before engaging in battle. After you start the battle, hit Backspace. See how many enemies are on the field right now, and you can figure out if there will be any enemy reinforcement waves coming in. Set up your archers on your hill of choice, get them to stand closer together, to get a tigher zone of fire, and make sure you've got a good bit of distance between you and the Falki. Order them to hold fire. Keep your Backspace menu open or know your shortcuts to issue quick orders. Now for the shmuck bait - your character. Start moving towards the Falki, slowly. By now they are charging like maniacs towards you, lances down, and screaming about blood and skulls. Do not panic. Order archers to open fire. Ideally, the Falki should at that point be close to your archers' Kill Zone - the distance at which the large majority of arrows are hitting their targets. If they're moving in mostly a single column, dodge the lead lancer by moving slightly to the side, making sure to keep other Falki between you and the other lancers, Your primary goal here is to create a traffic jam. The follow-up lancers SHOULD get stuck on the Falki in front, stopping dead in their tracks. The Falki (one or more) in front should miss you with their lance(s) by a little bit. If the Falki are moving in more or less a wider mass, pass in front of their charge and to the side (right or left). This will aggro them. Just like in the example above, you have now picked up their aggro (just like a tank in an MMO, vroom vroom). Make sure they're stuck in the traffic jam. Meanwhile, your archers are firing really fast, like a minigun made of muscles and arrows. Horsemen are big targets. They should start taking a lot of hits now. If cheating, heal up. If not, stay alive. Stay with the Falki, blocking their path to your archers. Draw your sword (and maybe shield) and defend yourself, doing as much damage to the horses, and maybe the Falki if you can get any hits in. Horsemen without horses are not very fast, and they stay even longer under archer fire. For archers, distance is life. Keep them away from the archers, block them however you can, draw their aggro if you must. Once a group of Falki is unhorsed and damaged, disengage and move on to block another, or flee behind your archers and Tab to retreat. As the Falki fall and their reinforcements start spawning in, get ready to intercept their buddies, draw their aggro and do the same thing to them. If your archers have good melee weapons, they can handle the occasional Falki that slips past. Whenever you can, rush back and help kill their attackers. Archers who are meleeing are NOT firing. This is more or less an excellent way of dealing with a large number of enemy horsemen. Rinse, repeat. Serve hot with side dish of your choice. TWO - Operation Rohan AKA Horse Lovers' Convention. Mass cavalry, a combination of fairly decent shock (lancers) and combat (one-hander + shield and heavy armor) types, mixed in with some horse archers for harrasing / pursuing fleeing enemies, plus a fairly well-equipped player character on an armored horse with decent speed. This does not require any healing cheats, if you're careful (and you should be). This requires careful timing and decent management of a chaotic mass cavalry battle. Ideally, you should overwhelm the enemy in at least numbers, if not numbers AND quality of horsemen. If your guys are not absolute trash (Bandits or worse), they should be fine. Cavalry Squires of any faction should do just fine in large enough numbers, either that or use any decent cavalry. Try to engage on a fairly flat piece of land. The flatter the land, the smoother mass cavalry operations will go, because the horsemen don't slow down (and lose that all-important strike - retreat capacity and bonus damage from high speed). Make a note of the enemy numbers before engaging in battle. After you start the battle, hit Backspace. See how many enemies are on the field right now, and you can figure out if there will be any enemy reinforcement waves coming in. Start by gathering your horsemen in a line behind you, order them to follow. Proceed forward at a carefully chosen speed. Your troops should be fairly close behind, but not breathing down your neck. Watch your map carefully - the aforementioned Falki maniacs are barreling towards you at the speed of FUCK YOU PLAYER, screaming about sodomizing your nostrils. Again, do not panic. Draw the aggro of the Falki by moving towards them, then to a side. They will follow you, like good little doggies, turning away to chase you, forgoing a dangerous lance charge into your guys. When they're mostly turning their backs or flanks to your guys, order your troops to charge. Wheel back your character so the Falki chasing you are led (kited) into the mass of our cavalry. Make sure to break the enemy formation apart as much as you safely can. For the next move, order your troops to follow you. Then, when they're in amongst the enemy (the two forces are pretty well mixed with one another), order them to charge again. The result will be that your guys are immediately engaging the enemy in vicious, close quarters action. The Falki Rangers won't be able to shoot too much, and the Falki Knights will find their lances almost useless. same goes for any other horse archers or lance cavalry. If your cavalry is superior, they will cut them down in short order. Whenever one of their guys dies, loses their horse or is surrounded by your guys, it means that, in that little portion of the battlefield, you have LOCAL numerical superiority. More of your guys ganging up on one of their guys means a large number of attacks is used to bring down one guy. One good enemy soldier against multiple good soldiers of your own can't last long if they stay in the fight - all those attacks are hitting, causing damage, stun-locking the enemy, stopping them from attacking. For every enemy that falls, for every second your soldiers stay alive longer in the fight than the enemy, you're gaining not only LOCAL battlefield superiority, but TOTAL battlefield superiority, edging you closer towards the win. Less of their guys are fighting against more of your guys, getting swarmed and cut down by a massive number of attacks, surrounded, often without hope of escaping. It's hard to recover from taking lots of casualties fast, and those few survivors being swarmed by a numerous enemy. Your guys are by now engaged, hopefully giving better than they get, cutting down the enemies in droves, and swarming the survivors. As your guys are engaging, and the fight is breaking up into many smaller duels across the map, protect your guys from being overwhelmed. If you see someone getting swarmed, rush to help them. If the entire enemy force is not on the field, by now they should be getting reinforcements. Watch your radar map closely, while observing the fight, getting the occasional kill and helping to defeat larger enemy groups. There! There they are! The enemy reinforcements have just spawned in! But your guys are all over the place, mad with blood-lust, chasing after the surviving enemies all over the map, in small groups. If a small group of your guys gets zerg-rushed by a larger group of enemies, they could be in trouble. And you want your guys to survive to grow up big and strong, to conquer the world for you, don't you? Order them immediately to follow you, WHILE you're moving through ( or behind) the enemy formation. I don't care HOW you do it, but your surviving forces (most of your troops survived by now if they're any good) have to follow your orders and charge either THROUGH the enemy formation (which is easier if the enemy is on foot) or AROUND them, enveloping and surrounding them. As soon as they're almost in position or actually in position, order them to CHARGE. The dance of death will begin again, the screams of winners and losers filling the air. Local superiority will matter yet again. The larger the number of your guys are piling on one or a few enemies, the more separated the enemies are from one another, the faster and more efficiently you'll turn enemies into gory hamburger meat. Once all enemy reinforcement waves are broken like this, hunt down the survivors, and enjoy those prisoners (no not like THAT) and that sweet, sweet loot, xp and renown as your victorious soldiers cheer for their mighty warlord - YOU. In both of these stratagems, having a plan, following it through, leaving the option to retreat if things are going badly, and carefully controlling the movement of your forces and the enemy's are key to success. The quote below applies at least partially to these two stratagems. To quote the great and powerful Sun Tzu, "If I can determine the enemy's disposition of forces while I have no perceptible form, I can concentrate my forces while the enemy is fragmented. The pinnacle of military deployment approaches the formless: if it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot discern it nor the wise make plans against it." Good luck, commander.